


I Have Loved Some Ladies, and I Have Loved Jim Beam

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: AU, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24034951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: Voyager has limped home scarred and scorched after a grueling 15 years in the Delta Quadrant, and now a poorly adjusted Janeway is super depressed and drunk and ridiculous, and everybody’s worried about her.
Relationships: Kathryn Janeway/B'Elanna Torres, Kathryn Janeway/Seven of Nine, Tal Celes/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 9
Kudos: 25





	1. A Little Mediocrity and a Lot of Booze Later

**Author's Note:**

> Found this ancient bs while I was messing around the other day. Probably no hope of ever being revisited and/or finished. 🙃

I knew it’d been a bad sign when she’d grown her hair back out three years ago. Of course, it had started long before that. When we got back to Earth–a bunch of bedraggled targs with a Borg-loving p’tach for a leader, as my mother had said with half a sneery smile on her face when she embraced me for the first time in twenty years–it had been a whirlwind of debriefings and review boards and promotions, and she never should’ve accepted her admiralty.

But she had, and it had damn near killed her. A little mediocrity and a lot of booze later, she had finally retired. But somewhere in between she had grown her hair back out and started wearing buns again, presumably trying to regain some part of herself she had lost years and light years ago, something prim and Starfleet, something conventional and safe. But it was a sham. Even Seven–or maybe especially Seven–had recognized the stale, desperate smell of the maneuver. Sure, it wasn’t the bun’s fault, but it was the easiest thing to blame.

We had both been in her office the day she had revealed it. It was some semi-formal occasion, some meeting to discuss some boring committee’s findings. I had thought at first that maybe it was a good sign, that she was finally getting her act together again, coming out of her stupor, but then she had gesticulated, and I had smelled whiskey, and then I had known what Seven’s face had said she had already known: that our former captain was now a cranky, half drunk admiral who had been searching her memory’s databanks for something that might give her some of her old edge, some medium to talk to a dead woman.

Then, at the end of the meeting, Seven had raised her occular implant and said, “Your new hairstyle is inefficient,” and Janeway had snarled and said, “Dismissed.” If the scene hadn’t been so cold and ugly, I would’ve laughed.

And now here we all were at Naomi Wildman’s Starfleet graduation. I hadn’t really expected her to be there. Since she had retired, she hadn’t been to a single Starfleet event.

But there she was in huge dark glasses and a black skirt suit.

“Check out the Captain,” Tom whispered in my ear. It wasn’t a mistake. He refused to call her Admiral. I suspected he was trying to subtly will her out of whatever funk she was in, which–when done to her face–had exactly the opposite of the intended effect. “She looks like an old-timey movie star going to an old-timey funeral.” I had to agree with my husband: there was no better description for her than that.

I surreptitiously watched her surreptitiously drink from a flask she had slipped out of her huge black purse. In the old days, there had been many times I’d wanted to punch her. Now I wanted to punch her even harder, but not for even remotely the same reasons.

Tal Celes was seated next to her, sitting completely straight and pretending not to see Janeway’s little extracurricular activities.

It’s funny what people you stay in touch with after an ordeal. Harry Kim, my husband’s erstwhile best friend, had gotten promoted and had immediately gotten back into space. We saw him every year-ish. On the other hand, Samantha Wildman, somebody I used to see occasionally in passing, played pool with me every Friday. And then there was Seven, who drifted in and out of my house at strange, unexpected intervals to fix my appliances with Borg algorithms when I couldn’t cajole them.

Janeway saw Miral (and us, by association) on her birthday. Yet Tal Celes baked Janeway muffins at least twice a week and served as her chauffeur the one time per month she left her old-fashioned and depressingly unkempt bungalow. As far as I knew, Tal was Janeway’s only regular anything, which was probably a positive after the string of increasingly bizarre flings that had abruptly begun and ended about five years ago.

I sometimes wondered how often any of us would’ve seen Chakotay.

I tried not to wonder about that too often.

Anyway, there we all were. Tuvok was giving the commencement address. Janeway had sneaked off to the bathroom for this. She couldn’t even face him from an auditorium away, apparently.

Tom rolled his eyes when I said I needed to powder my ridges and headed in the direction of the ladies’ room.

Voices from within stalled me, though. Somebody had beaten me to the punch. I stood there eavesdropping for a minute:

Janeway gave a short, husky laugh. I couldn’t see her face, but I would’ve put money on being able to describe it as humorless.

“And you always know what’s best for me, don’t you?” Janeway said, her voice low and crackling like particularly unpleasant static electricity. I smelled smoke. Janeway was really smoking in the girls’ room? Was she kidding with this?

“Statistically I have been correct about your well-being in many instances, and my assertions about the carcinogenic qualities of tobacco products are both factual and warranted,” Seven’s voice said.

That laugh crackled again, like when you’re half asleep and move your blanket on a dry, cold night, and the zip of tiny blue lightning frightens your sleepy brain.

“Factual, maybe. Warranted, no,” Janeway’s voice said. I chose this moment to walk in. It was as good as any, I supposed.

Janeway was draped against a sink in her old Janeway way–that old coiled feline way that was as languid and flirtatious as it was taut and dangerous. At least that much about her hadn’t changed. Seven, for her Borg part, was standing several feet away, rigid as ever in a blue cocktail dress. At least that much about her had changed: she wasn’t wearing leotards anymore.

Even half drunk, Janeway looked to be winning the argument. But that was probably just because she was half drunk and therefore ruffling Seven with her very presence.

“Looks like it’s old home week in here,” I said, just this side of jovial.

Seven continued glaring at Janeway, but Janeway turned her face to me.

And I had to shake off the feeling that she might’ve been looking through me. I got a chill, and I forgot what I had intended to do when I had originally thought to catch her being a reprobate in the lavatory.

Seven suddenly turned on her heel and executed a diva storm out, and I had only a vague, haunting feeling why.

I still had that chill, and Janeway and I stared at each other for a minute. At least a minute.

And I realized the chill was guilt.

And I realized Seven’s diva storm out was so that I wouldn’t see her cry.

Old home week, indeed.


	2. Charm Is Irrelevant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seven narrates...

When I was newer to humanity, I often espoused all manner of erroneous, Borg-influenced claims. Many of them concerned emotion, beauty, subjectivity, and all were denigrated with sentiments like irrelevance, inefficiency, futility.

If I were asked to describe my perfect vision of the universe, many of these claims would still hold true. But I realized now that the world in which I lived–the human world–could not and should not work on a Borg system. I had come to appreciate, if not understand fully, the merits of useless things.

I recalled thinking, early in my new existence, that charm–that quality of being able to discern what someone might want to hear and then give it to him with a luxurious smile–was irrelevant. But I found this untrue almost immediately. Charm was not only relevant but essential. That was one of the first things Captain Janeway tacitly taught me.

And I almost hated her for it. And I hated her for that, too–that almost. In many ways I relished simple things–emotions that were pure and either love or hate, sad or happy. At least I could understand those. These complex emotions of anger and delight and frustration and confusion–I hated them, and I loved them because I always associated them with her.

Charm was hard for me to grasp but easy for me to recognize. Charm was artifice but also natural. Needless to say, it was not natural to me and completely natural to her.

One point four hours after having dismissed me from the ladies’ room, this woman could be regaling former crew members with tales they hadn’t even remembered, even though she was visibly inebriated. This was the definition of charm. She had it. It was something she possessed and could use at her whim. It was capital. And she used it as such.

It was how she had beaten the Hirogen, the Devore, even the Borg to some extent. It was how she beat everyone. But now, watching her beat Samantha Wildman at pool, watching her laugh at Bolian jokes, watching her sneak drinks in secluded corners, it seemed to be all she had left.

It must be hard to live on charm alone.

I eased into her presence as she sat down next to Crewman Tal. She looked at me. I couldn’t even begin to deduce what her look might have signalled, the deep blue of it penetrating me in a way I hadn’t felt or been confused about in years.

“Seven. Or–I heard a rumor you prefer Annika now,” she said as though we hadn’t had a confrontation in the lavatory preceding the party.

“That rumor is unfounded. I continue to prefer Seven.”

“Shame. I always liked Annika,” she said, her mouth rising on one side. That was charm. I hated it.

“Regardless. I wanted to continue our previous conversation.”

She raised an eyebrow and smiled at Crewman Tal and then at me although the smiles were slightly different somehow.

“Well, Seven. I’m not currently smoking, so I’m not sure what we have to discuss.” She crossed her legs and broke eye contact to scan the room, a smile still on her face.

“I mean, of course, the matter we were discussing before you began smoking.”

She raised her eyebrows and put her tongue to her top teeth. I took this to mean she did not recall what we had been discussing and opened my mouth to begin to remind her, but she cut me off:

“You’re not going to start reciting star dates and exact phrasings to me, are you?”

“No,” I said, although that is precisely what I had intended.

“Good.” She winked at Crewman Tal, and the woman giggled briefly.

“If you will excuse us,” I said to the Bajoran. My former captain crossed her arms over her chest and nodded. Crewman Tal looked at both of us and then vacated her seat.

“So what now?” she said. “You give me your old, ‘I prefer to stand line,’ and I sit here listening to your admonitions getting a crick in my neck?”

Silently I sat.

“Phew. I’m a little old for that nonsense,” she said.

“You’re a little old for a great deal of nonsense,” I said.

“And just what is that supposed to mean?” she said a little loudly.

“If you would only let the Doctor administer a hypospray. You could–”

“I could what? Be back to my old self?”

I stared at her, and she continued.

“Maybe I don’t want to be my old self. Maybe my old self wasn’t all she was cracked up to be. And maybe even if she was all she was cracked up to be, that woman is as dead as Chakotay.”

His name seemed to ring louder than the rest of the sentence, and we sat there in the echo.

He always seemed to come up in our conversations, and always as unpleasantly as this. I had loved him in my childish way those many years ago, and she knew how I always reacted when she said unpleasant things. This was the opposite side of charm: If one knew what to say, one certainly knew what not to say. Perhaps the opposite of charm is spite, and perhaps Captain Janeway bore an abundance of both.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said finally. She laughed once.

“That makes two of us.”

It was at this moment that Tal Celes returned. I could have stayed, but I did not.


	3. An Edith Piaf Stupor

“Full disclosure: I did not want to call you.”

I looked at the squinting face of Tal Celes. We were standing in Janeway’s frontyard, and both of us were squinting against the full and blinding sun. The yard seemed to be squinting, too. It was half green and half yellow, and just a tad overgrown.

“You don’t say,” I said.

“Well, I wanted to call Harry, but he’s on Deep Space 6, and I guess I could’ve called Tuvok, but she can’t even look him in the eye when she’s sober, and I absolutely wasn’t going to–”

I squinted harder, and she stopped talking before she could say that she hadn’t wanted to contact her former Astrometrics lab boss, which I was 100% certain was the next name she was going to drop.

“Well, you called me, and I’m here. What’s the situation?”

She turned toward the front porch briefly and heaved a large sigh. She turned back to me and put a hand to her forehead to shield her eyes.

“Um. Well.” She bit her lip, and it was like we were back on Voyager and she was telling me about how she screwed up aligning a sensor. I squared my shoulders and acted like her boss’s boss again.

“Well?” I said, as gruff and Klingon-chief-engineer as I could muster.

“I–I don’t know how well you know the Admiral anymore… But social functions really take it out of her,” she said, shifting her weight.

“Ok…?” My voice was still sarcastic and annoyed, but something was pinging in my stomachs—something familiar and unpleasant and guilty and scared.

“Well, I thought it was that. You know. A usual bender after a social occasion. Where she would hole up with some jazz and whiskey for a day and then be– Well, not herself, but– like usual. Like asking me to get her Chinese at 3am and then telling me I’m stupid for doing it and that she didn’t deserve my charity. You know.” She shrugged.

I blinked. Was this really Tal’s life? She shifted her weight again and continued her monologue:

“But. I– it’s bad. It’s the same Edith Piaf album on repeat. And so much whiskey. And–well, the replicator.”

Everyone knew Janeway had several stages of melancholia. It took someone who knew her well–which, I guessed with an internal frown, now included Tal Celes–to sort them into a cascade of categories based on music selection.

The first was Julie London. If somebody could make her laugh, somebody could get her out of it pretty easily. The next was The Doors. She had to sleep that one off, and the hangover the next day would render her totally legalistic and masochistic. The next was Rachmaninoff. She’d be out for at least a week, but when she came back she would be vigorous and athletic. The final stage was Edith Piaf. On Voyager, we’d only seen her in an Edith Piaf stupor once. It had lasted for over a month, and she’d gotten out of it by shooting some big guns at some aliens that were going to take over her ship. Afterward, there was a lingering tinge of it for what seemed like a long time. It took fighting the Borg to get our old hearty Mama Janeway back.

Yes, this sounded bad.

And I didn’t know if I was up for it. Hell, I didn’t know if the Borg were up for it.

But I was intrigued by the last part of Tal’s statement.

“What about the replicator?” I said. She sighed.

“It’s–. There was an incident.”

I rolled my eyes. I had guessed that much, of course.

“I’ve got other things to do today. If you could quit hem-hawing around…”

“Well, after the party, I brought her home and–”

“Kahless! She’s been in there alone with Jack Daniels for a week?!” I said, pushing past her intent on going to the porch. She grabbed my arm.

“No! Of course not! Let me finish!”

“Well do it already!” I turned back to her. She retracted her hand from my arm and frowned.

“And she does not drink Jack Daniels.”

“Tal, I am three seconds away from knocking some sense into you.” She frowned harder, but something flashed in her eyes–something that said she kind of wanted me to lash out at her and that she might want to lash right back.

She inhaled, and the flash was gone. She turned her face toward the house.

“Well, I dropped her off, and I went about my business–”

I tried not to roll my eyes, but I must have accidentally because she paused again.

“Like I said,” she said, “ I didn’t want to call you. But there’s not many of us left.”

I looked at her–really looked at her, probably for the first time ever. For the first time I realized she was old like me and tired like me. And I understood what she meant by “us.” She didn’t mean Voyager crew. There were a lot of that us. The us she meant was the us that really knew Janeway. Really loved her and really hated her and really really loved her. It was times like these, looking into these big Bajoran eyes full of all the same things my eyes were filled with that I wished Neelix hadn’t defected to the Talaxians: He could’ve made a gross cake out of ingredients that shouldn’t have been within fifteen lightyears of each other let alone in the same mixing bowl, and everything would’ve been fine. I had always kind of scoffed at his “morale officer” title until he had left.

I sighed.

“Can we at least get into some shade or something?”

She looked hesitantly toward the house, then at me. She nodded finally, and I followed her around back to a disheveled backyard featuring a few big trees that needed pruning, overgrown grass, some dead potted flowers, a rickety hammock, and what may have once been a transport pad from at least two generations ago when they couldn’t be retrofitted to old houses like this so they had to go on the back porch. We sat on a bench whose structural integrity was questionable, and she continued.

“I came to check on her the next day. I brought her some oatmeal because it’s a good source of iron, and–” She looked at me and censored herself for extraneousness. “Anyway, she wasn’t here. Or at least she wasn’t anywhere I could see her, and I got pretty frantic because her vehicle was still here, and she says she’s too pretty to take taxis. It was something Mike used to tell her, and she liked it so she kept it–”

“Who the hell is Mike?” I was almost afraid to know. She looked at me as though I should’ve known already.

“Ayala,” she said. We exchanged a glance that said we both wondered if Janeway would’ve taken up with the first blonde ex-Borg she met if Seven had died instead of Chakotay.

“Anyway,” I said. She cleared her throat.

“Anyway. I was getting frantic, and I went out back and looked at that thing over there to see if maybe she got it to work somehow.” She disdainfully gestured to the transport pad. “That’s when I heard her laugh. ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she said.” I had to admit Tal did a passable Janeway. “The laugh continued, and I was looking around, and she finally took pity on me in between giggles and said, ‘Look up, dummy.’ And I did, and she was on the roof.”

I laughed briefly and guiltily at both the situation and the expression on Tal’s face that said she still wasn’t over the shock of it.

“And what was she doing on the roof?” I said.

“I asked her the same thing. ‘Would you believe it if I said sunbathing?’ she said. And, of course, I said no. She divulged nothing else and said she would come down if I ordered a pizza. So I did.”

“Seems reasonable,” I said. And even through the laugh I was suppressing, that pinging in my stomachs was becoming uncomfortable.

“She seemed pretty lucid, just kind of in a weird mood. Like if we were still on Voyager, she’d probably be messing around in the Da Vinci program or Fair Haven or something. And so I figured she was ok, so I decided I’d wait a week or until she called me, whichever came first. A few days later, I received a transmission from her house. But it wasn’t her exactly.”

The pinging pinged faster, and I got a weird feeling that maybe Tal was about to say something about nebula gas or spatial rifts or photon lifeforms or some ludicrous Delta Quadrant monster coming back to haunt us in Janeway’s drunken body.

“Oh?” I said, calm.

“She had unknowingly contacted me when she had drunkenly disassembled her replicator. From what I could gather, the process had been taking place for a few hours before she had finally thrown the conversion matrix across the room, where it had inadvertently landed on her communicator. I watched her curse at the other pieces for a few minutes and trip over the couch before she finally passed out on the rug in a pile of debris. I closed the channel. The next day she wouldn’t answer at all. And now here we both are.”

We looked at each other.

“I guess I don’t know what you expect me to do,” I said.

“Maybe if there’s two of us, we can– I don’t know. Maybe I should’ve called Seven after all.”

We looked at each other again, and her eyes were suddenly older than mine.

“You probably should’ve,” I said. “But I’m here.”

It was then that I felt a ping not in my stomachs but on my thigh. It was not the regular place for my emotions to manifest themselves. I looked over at Tal, whose brow was furrowed as she wiped something from her forehead.

“Oh no,” she said.

About a quarter of a glass of watered down whiskey and a few half-melted ice cubes splattered equally between mine and Tal’s shoulders.

“I’m not coming down for a pizza this time,” Janeway’s voice said. It was Klingon-opera low and gravelly, and I knew that wasn’t a great sign. I looked up at the roof to find my former captain in a slightly ratty red silk robe that was only barely concealing her certainly sunburned and almost certainly nude flesh. “I may not come down at all. I am not as young as I was a week ago, after all. And if you want to remove me bodily, I must warn you that I’ve been known to bite.”

Yes, this was not a great sign at all.

If Tal wouldn’t call Seven, I would.


End file.
